Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin has been appointed by the UN Secretary General as Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Dr. Osotimehin has an impressive background as a trained medical doctor, a former Minister of Health for the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a member of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), and a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development. We are confident UNFPA will move forward under his leadership to pursue its mandate — ensuring that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.

In a statement by Phillip Crowley, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Public Affairs, the US expressed it pleasure and thanked the outgoing UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Obaid for her tireless service, particularly her efforts to reduce maternal mortality and promote universal access to reproductive health. During her tenure, contributions to UNFPA more than doubled.

According to Mr. Crowley, the United States strongly supports UNFPA and family planning programs worldwide, providing $55 million to support UNFPA in 2010. “We look forward to continuing our partnership with UNFPA and working with Dr. Osotimehin in the coming years,” he said.

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Shamsydeen Badmus

UN research suggests Sub-Saharan Africa has seen a sharp decline in the number of new HIV cases. The United Nations Joint UN Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) UNAIDS said that newly-reported HIV incidence declined by over 25 per cent between 2001 and 2009 in 22 countries in the region. The number of people receiving HIV treatment had also improved, increasing 12 times in the past six years to a total of 5.2 million patients. On the other hand, UNAIDS found that HIV rates were increasing in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The figures were released ahead of the UN Millennium Development Goals review summit, which opened in New York on Monday.

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By Shamsydeen Badmus

A new study published in this month’s Bulletin of the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that neither wealth nor poverty is driving the spread of HIV and AIDS in Africa. The study’s findings challenge widely accepted views that poverty fuels HIV. The researcher, Justin Parkhurst of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, carried out a comparative analysis of HIV and wealth data from 12 sub-Saharan African countries with generalised epidemics. Parkhurst found several different patterns for the relation between income level and HIV prevalence, varying according to country, time, gender and education level. His findings indicate that prevention campaigns targeted at specific risk behaviours should be stronger than “one-size-fits-all” models which do not account for the complex relation between all those factors.

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Seyi Oduyela/Washington, DC

The United Nations-backed Global Fund announced yesterday that it has secured 2.4 billion US dollars to support projects that fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in low-income countries over the next two years. These three diseases are estimated to kill more than four million people every year. The Global Fund also said that a 216 million US dollar pilot programme to reduce prices for effective malaria medicines will go ahead in nine African countries and Cambodia. Researchers at an international malaria conference in Nairobi earlier this month had revealed that almost one million people die from the disease each year because they cannot afford the most effective treatment available.

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USAID-Funded Project Increases Access to HIV Services in Uganda

By Seyi Oduyela/Washington, DC

 A new report published by the Alliance describes how Alliance Uganda implemented the three-year USAID funded project, Expanding the Role of Networks of People Living with HIV in Uganda (the Networks Model project).

The report outlines the background, achievements and lessons learned during the start up, implementation and close out of the project, which ended in July 2009. It aims to support learning across the Alliance’s programmes and the wider HIV response.

The project’s main objective was to use networks of people living with HIV to increase access to HIV and wrap-around services. The project did this by building the capacity of groups of people living with HIV (PLHIV groups) to link communities and people living with HIV with their local health services. It also gave people living with HIV an important role in supporting the delivery of HIV services in health facilities and the community.

During its three-year life, the project dramatically increased access of people living with HIV to prevention, care and support services. Over 1.3 million people accessed HIV services through the project.

Emilly Katamujuna, Programme Manager of Alliance Uganda commented: ‘We often hear arguments from policymakers and donors that community based organizations are not able to deliver national scale services that will sufficiently impact the epidemic. This report documents how the Networks Model Project proved that a coordinated community based response can have an impact at a national level.’

The project originally started in seven districts of Uganda but rapidly expanded to cover 40 districts nationwide, and was replicated in a further 12 districts by Alliance partners.

An external evaluation of the project undertaken by JHPIEGO on behalf of USAID found that the Network Support Agents – trained people living with HIV (PLHIV) to work as community volunteers – was one of the most successful components of the project:

“The [NSA’s] have been able to mobilize PLHIV to utilize existing services, including health facility-based services and wraparound services provided by community-based organizations (CBOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). They compensate for a shortage of staff at health facilities, where they direct and counsel clients. They also play a critical role in tracking and following up clients.”

Monica is a Network Support Agent for Namungalwe Village, Iganga district in Uganda. The impact of her work is clearly described by one member of the community who wished to remain anonymous: ‘Monica has been of great support to me and my husband with regard to adhering to treatment and I am doing well. She has supported us to disclose to our parents and my brother our HIV status because most of our relatives initially thought that it was witchcraft. Disclosing has helped us to get care and support from the family.’

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Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary-General

 

United Nations Urges HIV Travel Ban Lift

Seyi Oduyela/Washington, DC

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged countries worldwide to remove travel restrictions for HIV-positive people. The call comes after US president Barack Obama announced a decades-old US travel ban on HIV-positive non-US citizens would be officially lifted today. HIV-positive visitors will effectively be allowed entry to the US from early 2010. The UN has hailed the decision and urged other countries to follow the example. South Korea, China and Ukraine are some of the nations already considering the suspension of similar restrictions, according to UNAIDS. Human Rights Watch also welcomed the announcement, stressing that travel or residence restrictions on HIV-positive people are discriminatory, violate fundamental rights and impede effective responses to HIV by fostering misinformation and stigma.

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By Adebayo Somuyiwa

Almost one million people die from malaria every year because they cannot afford the most effective treatment available for the disease, according to research released today. The findings from a study of six sub-Saharan African countries and Cambodia were presented during an international malaria conference in Nairobi. Artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) prices can reach up to 11 US dollars, compared with just 30 cents for older and less effective drugs. The director of Populations Services International Malaria, Desmond Chavasse, said full ACT treatment can cost up to 65 times the daily minimum wage in some African countries. Chavasse warned that the treatment’s presence in public health clinics can be as low as 20 per cent.

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By Tayo Adelaja

CiSHAN, an Alliance Linking Organisation in Nigeria, has been playing a key role in advocating for a law to protect people living with or affected by HIV.

An estimated 2.6 million Nigerians are living with HIV. These people have no law to protect them from losing their homes or jobs, or being mistreated by health workers, because of their status.

The need for appropriate legislation and the speedy passage of an anti-discrimination bill through Nigeria’s National Assembly became clear following CiSHAN’s stigma and discrimination project supported by the Global Fund (Round 5). In this project, CiSHAN provided its member organisations with training on reducing stigmatisation in society, using a community outreach model.

Working in partnership with the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), CiSHAN has succeeded in putting a stigma and discrimination bill before the National Assembly and is now waiting for it to be ratified. This would be an important victory in a continuing battle.

“Laws alone are not sufficient to address these issues,” says CiSHAN’s Executive Secretary Ayo Ipinmoye. “The fact that we have a rule or laws that are not being implemented is not the fault of the law but that of the people who are supposed to implement the laws.

“The onus is now on us as civil society groups to make sure these laws are given muscle and teeth. But in the situation that we are now, there is nothing that criminalises some of these crimes and that is very important. Having a law is important, as a first step.”

Accordingly, CiSHAN have not only focused on advocacy work at government level. The organisation’s Human Rights specialist Jumai Danuk has been leading community mobilisation and sensitisation efforts to ensure the general public are aware of their rights and the efforts undertaken to enshrine these in national law.

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The number of HIV-positive people receiving antiretroviral (ARV) drugs has increased tenfold in the past five years, a United Nations report has found. More than four million people in low and middle-income countries were accessing the treatment in 2008, according to the report by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. However, this figure still represents less than half the number of HIV-positive people who need ARV therapy. The report also found significant increases in HIV testing and access to medicines that prevent mother-to-child infection.

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By Tayo Adelaja

Community-based access to drugs for hemorrhages and infection could significantly prevent maternal deaths in Africa, a new paper by researchers at University College London has found. The researchers developed a mathematical model to estimate the impact of providing misoprostol drugs, which are used to induce labour and treat miscarriages, and antibiotics to community health workers. They argue this community-based strategy is crucial for women who have no access to skilled health attendants or well-equipped facilities. This approach would also be complemented by interventions to strengthen health systems. More than half a million women die every year from complications during pregnancy or childbirth. Ninety per cent of these deaths are in Africa and Asia, according to the United Nations Population Fund.

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